I was told by a guy that moved many positions to India that the half life of Mexico was 20 years and the half life of China is 30 years. From that I conclude I'll be too old to be a productive employee when it starts to cost too much to be located in China where my position was moved to 2 years ago. I'm part of the 37%. I have hope for the 'trickle' you mention and we need a flood!

On one side, it is a little unfair to include those that are not and never will be part of the work force.

On the other side, what we are looking for is the delta increase or decrease so....

If we could see a year to year comparision that included all the categories currently included in the 37% figure but referred back to previous years, then we could see the number we are interested in, the change.

If it's been 37% for ten years than this is not significant.

My two cents as I was part of the given up group. Too old to get hired, too young to retire and let go by companies dedicted to farming our skills, knowledge and jobs to the 50cents a week groups. Not that I'm bitter at all.

The worst part of it I see is..

First we outsourced our manufacturing jobs.

Then we outsourced the support jobs that could be phone support.

Now we've outsourced engineering after teaching the offshore workers how to engineer. In addition, we've outsourced the secrect sauce so to speak so soon the only peope working will be those at Walmart, McDonalds, and perhaps the excecutives and sales staff.

I wonder how long this will last as if so many people are out of work and hence have no money to buy products, will we need McDonalds and Walmart workers?

Even further, if we stop buying product where is the need for sales people.

That leaves the executives but then they always seem to win with gigantic salaries, bonuses and severance packages.

I started fixing things before I was 10 years old and was paid for my work shortly thereafter because I was good. I am now 57 and haven't work a full time job in two years mostly by choice. I spent a lifetime trying my hardest to be the best electro/mechanical technician around by fixing everything from outdoor power equipment to spectrometers. I'm also very good at wiring design and mechanical fabrication. It was decided by the industry leaders that although I was making 65K a year I am now going to get 40K max and dropping every year. And I have to work like a slave. I always produced without provocation and never took breaks, sometimes even lunch. Additionally contract employment seems to be the new way of hiring. The last job lasted 5 1/2 months and I was laid off two days before Christmas. I didn't qualify for unemployment because I was two weeks short despite I worked 50+ hours a week the whole time.

Here's my solution; If all of the senior technicians like myself started working outside the technical fields, there would no one to pass on proper design and assembly techniques. Okay, engineers could try to fill this void by training our youth but few have hands on experience like the guy that's been doing this their entire life.

Will this cause a collapse in quality in world products? Maybe? I know one thing for sure. My experience shows me that quality craftsmanship at a reasonable price is a thing of the past. My breed is dying off and there is no financial incentive to change this.

When are the industrial leaders going to realize that shooting for a higher profit margin will be the demise of US production as is already evidenced?

Just throwing this out there. Anyone notice it's a bitch to repair things anymore because it wasn't designed by the guy the used to fix them?

I suggest, again, that the statement, "A fact check rebuttal, however, debunks his figures" in incorrect and shows that the author failed to even read my article. Please correct this statement in the article here on EE Times.

There is no fact-check rebuttal for our article in which we clearly said:

"In the United States, we need to add a minimum of 127,000 jobs per month just to account for our annual population increase. Last month, only 74,000 jobs were added, the lowest increase since January 2011. Of those, 55,000 were added in the retail sector during the holidays. With so many unemployed experienced workers, many recent college graduates are left chasing too few rookie positions.

"The purported decrease in unemployment largely reflects how the government measures it. The unemployment rate only describes people who are currently working or looking for work.

"During particularly bad times, the unemployment rate frequently decreases by the number of people dropping out of the jobs market entirely. In December, the job participation rate fell to 62.8%, its lowest level in 35 years. According to Heidi Shierholz of the Economic Policy Institute, if these missing workers were included in the calculation, the unemployment rate would be 10.2%.

"Unemployment has never been measured very accurately. Calculations do not count those who have just entered the labor force and haven't found a job yet, who have been searching for employment so long they have given up the search, who work part time but are actively seeking full-time work and who are actively seeking employment but were not included in the monthly jobs survey.

"Unemployment in its truest definition, meaning the portion of people who do not have any job, is 37.2%. This number obviously includes some people who are not or never plan to seek employment. But it does describe how many people are not able to, do not want to or cannot find a way to work. Policies that remove the barriers to employment, thus decreasing this number, are obviously beneficial."

It seems to me that these are pretty small numbers. I certainly understand that it's very bad if you are one of the people being let go, but to scale, it's samall number.

It took one quick Google search to find "Caterpillar to layoff 20,000" (2009) and "Tyco Electronics to lay off 20,000" (also 2009).

Both are pretty small samplings, but I think there would be a lot more evidence floating around if one in three people who wanted to work were out of work. I suspect there's some politicizing in the Marotta report.

40 years takes us back to 1974. Having been around since then, I would take a lot more convincing to believe that we are even anywhere close to being the worst in misery in 40 years